Bstroy on Brand Beginnings, New Collections and The Future
Bstroy wants to get better acquainted with the fashion world.
Cofounders Brick Owens and Dieter Grams have been operating their New York City-based label since 2013, but this season they have taken the time to establish the core pieces that will serve as the foundation for the brand.
First, they launched their vintagesourced “Old World” T-shirts and printable “New World” T-shirt offerings in late October, followed by their two-headed teddy bear hoodies in November and their “Justice” capsule on Nov. 23. The assortment will be followed by a denim capsule, tracksuits inspired by vintage Air Force flight uniforms, and a collaboration with Alpha Industries.
Bstroy is primarily direct-to-consumer, with sales growing 45 percent from 2019 to 2020 and 30 percent from 2020 to 2021 due mostly to its accessories offering that includes socks with the brand's “(b).” symbol, one of the logos the company uses. Their more commonly used logo, the hexacomb, is a hexagonal patch with the brand name that is at time substituted for the shape itself stitched into the garment, like on the denim capsule it developed with Virgil Abloh for Off-White. Bstroy is also available at the Off-White Paris store, which devotes its top floor to brands OffWhite creative director Abloh had favored.
The new offering is rolling out just months after the company's doublehead hoodie and sailor trackpants were included in the Costume Institute's latest exhibition, “America: A Lexicon of Fashion.” However, the duo does not consider 2021 the beginning of their coming-out party.
Owens and Grams are both Atlanta natives from two opposite sides of the city, with Owens from the west side and Grams from the east. The two would meet on MySpace, where they learned that despite growing up in opposite ends of the city, they had shared experiences in their upbringing, as well as similar tastes in fashion.
“When you go to school and try to talk about the things you like, no one has an answer as to why someone likes what you like,” Owens said. “When we did meet on MySpace, we could deep dive into each other's brains and learned that we knew what we were talking about.”
Owens and Grams bonded over Dior Homme jeans during Hedi Slimane's era at the fashion house and “off-shoot Nike shoes that weren't Jordan,” Owens said, as well as Ralph Lauren heritage and how collectors called ‘Lo Lifes' made the brand their own. They would hang out frequently at the RRL store in Atlanta to become further immersed in the brand and fashion in general.
They decided to start Bstroy in 2012 and established the brand the following year as a platform to bring their ideas to life. “I know what drew us close was the ability to come from opposite sides of town, but share a similar perspective,” Owens said. “That's what makes the duality of Bstroy what it is.”
“We knew what we liked was cool and everyone else didn't get that,” Grams said. “You can either move on from it and never see anything from it or you create a platform and put your stakes down. We have visions for ourselves so let's see if it'll happen. That's why we decided to start doing shows.”
Their first show, called Boys Don't Cry, was held in the Lindbergh Marta station in Buckhead, which was unauthorized. They moved to New York City in 2015 through a connection with A$AP Mob, known for its members A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg and the late A$AP Yams, who died the day they had arrived in the city. Their first apartment now serves as their studio.
From there, they homed in on the brand story: futurism and the era after the post-apocalyptic world. Grams mentioned the recent remake of the film “Dune” as a prediction of the future and that Bstroy is “after ‘Dune,' a more developed version of that.” A world returning to civilization and taking references from a more recent past where denim and Air Jordan IV sneakers are prevalent.
Over time their work caught the attention of Alyx founder and Givenchy men's artistic director Matthew Williams, who invited them to Italy to work on Alyx for one season.
“We became fast friends,” Grams said. “He had heard of our work and wasn't afraid to say it. He could've not invited us, but he loves what we do so much and wanted to give us the information to build a brand.”
The meeting caught the attention of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who had the duo over to his headquarters to work together for the summer. Months later, they did a panel talk with Abloh, Rhuigi Villaseñor of Rhude and Who Decides War designer Ev Bravado at ComplexCon in 2018 and the following year they worked with Abloh on their first collaboration.
The meeting caught the attention of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who had the duo over to his headquarters to work together for the summer. Months later, they did a panel talk with Abloh, Rhuigi Villaseñor of Rhude and Who Decides War designer Ev Bravado at ComplexCon in 2018. The following year they worked with Abloh on product for his Canary Yellow project to be sold for his Figures of Speech exhibition stop at Atlanta's High Museum of Art. The collaboration was halted and later offered at Bstroy's Atlantawerp pop-up in 2020.
But in 2019, Grams and Owens took what many felt was a step too far: they unveiled their Samsara collection, which featured hoodies with bullet holes and the names Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas, all schools and colleges where there were mass shootings. The pieces stirred an immediate backlash, including from school shooting survivors and the Vicki Soto Memorial Fund, named after a teacher who was killed at Sandy Hook. Commenters on social media called the pieces “disgusting” and “disrespectful.”
Responding to the controversy now, the duo commented exclusively to WWD: “Samsara had many functions as an artistic device; one being to highlight the ongoing, often euphemized tragedies of school and public place shootings and what they have in common. Another function was to demonstrate how we as a society contextualize information based on where we think it's coming from. Stereotypes still shape the opinion of the public more than the intention of the art.”
For instance, they said, the stereotype is that “Black people are lazy, so we saw in droves this accusation of laziness in regards to Samsara despite hours of painstaking dedication and commitment. Proving the point that many people didn't see us as we are, but as they are taught to assume about people who look like us. We feel Samsara's many functions were all effective but the main focus, the clothes, was overshadowed so we are taking time away from politics to make sure the clothes get the proper attention.”
But even before Samsara, the duo didn't shy away from making statements through their designs. They also have critiqued police violence through their “Justice” capsule that they revived and launched this month. The capsule features hoodies for the New York, Atlanta and Beverly
Hills police departments with an expletive printed over the forces' symbol.
They explained the capsule, saying they found it strange how law enforcement sells merchandise for support, much like a sports team, or to raise funding when, for example, the NYPD in 2021 had a budget of $9.9 billion, down 3.1 percent from 2020 according to Citizens Budget Commission.
Grams shared a story about being wrongfully arrested by three plain-clothes police officers while commuting between appointments while he was working on samples in Midtown Manhattan. The officers claimed Grams fit the description of a suspect and said he was going to be let go but was held in jail instead.
“I think you can't be scared if you really want to affect change,” Grams said. “We're two Black men very aware that the world needs to change so we need to be part of the side that changes it.”
Owens and Grams are more designers than political activists but when your existence in itself can be politicized, it raises moments to speak on issues on their own way. Ultimately, they're focused on building the Bstroy world, which has been immortalized in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“It's so much work for us to do to build out the world,” Grams said. “We're focused on making tangible things people can buy and take away so that our world can be more tangible as a whole.”
Owens added, “I didn't have much of an idea for why something was so important until I met someone that appreciates the same things that I did, like things that are well-crafted. We both knew the importance of legacy and heritage. We understand the importance of being able to get something right the first time.”
The brand founders are rolling out their core collections, available online and at the Off-White Paris store.